The Down and Out King - 25

EMILY

Where the broth is made of bones,

Where the cobblers face all weather,

Where the stove is seldom lighted,

Where the rugs are daily boxed,

Where the tramps are daily righted,

And out of their grub are foxed.

We have had the next meeting with the guardians, and despite my best efforts, they insisted that I must cut the food budget back to what it was before. I still have ideas though about how we can save money - and still make the diets more palatable and nutritious, but it will just take me time to work it all out.

We have been invited to go to Worcester to visit with my brother, JCR, and his wife, Caroline. We plan to go next month - having a long weekend away - which since we will have been here for several months by then, we are due a break.

The vicar’s appeal for books worked a treat, and we now have 200 or more books of varying quality and on different subjects. I have appointed Elizabeth Lynn to be the librarian, and the first thing she
will do is make a list of all the books - and then create a system whereby each book has a card, which will be signed by the person borrowing the book. They will be allowed to keep it for a fortnight.
She is very excited about the project.

I have decided to pay a visit to Mrs. Guthrie, who runs the Servants’ Training Institute, established in 1849 here in Calne for girls to learn to be housemaids. Our Miss Nurse does the same for our girls,
but I feel that perhaps we are duplicating our efforts, and if our girls could go to Mrs Guthrie’s school, that would eliminate a cost from our premises, and perhaps add to the value of the girls’ education.

I have also decided that as we now have only 24 school age children, they should be taught at the local school from September. I will have a word with the local primary’s head teacher and arrange a list for him of the students we will be sending. He cannot object, and again, it will free up money for us to spend in different ways.

I am continuing to provide good nutritious and interesting food for the I ward - (Imbeciles and Idiots). They seem to appreciate it - and I hope that we will be able to have games or toys that might interest them in future. Perhaps the vicar might be called upon again to beg on our behalf.

I feel we have done so little, in our several months here - and that no matter how hard we try, we can not ever really make this into a happy, healthy house. But at least we are doing our best to try to
improve their lives.

I shall visit the local farmer to find out if we can get a cheap form of milk for our use - perhaps buttermilk - and that, although not as nutritious as regular milk - will at least have more benefit than
water. I will also visit Mr. Charles Harris who owns the pig farm to see if we can get a cheap source of lard. Since this is an area greatly regarded as suitable for raising pigs, we might as well benefit from the end products. Lard is cheaper than butter, and although it is not as nice, I agree, it still has energy value. Cook was quite concerned when I suggested she might like to slice the bread more thinly and put lard on it. I think perhaps I am trying too many things at once, and frightening the work force.

John has managed to get the regular men to do more in terms of house maintenance - things like whitewashing the walls and making sure the kitchens and bath areas are free of pests. Our sanitary arrangements are not ideal - but we cannot really afford to put in proper plumbing like they have at the Nursery run by the Duncans.

John has made slight changes with the system too, not anything to worry anyone so far. Not like me, with getting the Guardians' backs up straight away. But little by little, he is making things more
efficient and more agreeable. But John feels that I shouldn’t be so worried about trying to eliminate staff in order to save money  to be able to give our regulars and casuals better food. He says that salaries are paid by the Guardians directly, not out of the allowance of seven shillings a week per pauper - so that not having a school teacher or a industrial teacher would save the Guardians, but not help our cause. And it would put two people out of work, and although their load is light, they do a good job.

I had a new experience the other day. I helped deliver the baby of one of our regulars. It will go down in the logbook as a bastardy order. The mother's name is Ellen Collier, aged 35, unmarried, a pauper who
comes from Yatesbury. She was frightened out of her mind. I must admit that even with the nurse’s experience and my help, we needed to use quite a lot of brandy for one and all before the situation was concluded. But mother and baby are now doing fine, and the new mother dotes on her baby. I wish we could rearrange things so that families could stay together, but John says that we have made enough changes and that we should just let things go on as they are for the moment before getting the Guardians all in a flap again.

I had Mrs. Frances Maria Duncan from the Nursery over for tea the other day. She asked me about our building. I told her, “It is quite a feat of architecture. It was built in 1847 and designed by Thomas
Allom who was also the architect of the workhouse at Marloes Road, Kensington, and joint architect of Liverpool Union workhouse.

"The name of the workhouse is Northfield, and it is in the William and Mary style, of native stone, at a cost of about £5,000, and can accommodate 145 inmates. We call them regulars as it sounds less degrading. I expect you noticed the handsome Dutch gables and mullioned windows.”

“Yes, indeed, I did,” said Mrs. Duncan. “I don’t really understand much about these things. What exactly is a Union and who pays for you to run this establishment? There were no such things as this in Mauritius.”

“Well, after the Poor Act of 1834 the care of the poor was given over to the control of parishes within a county. There were Guardians appointed from each of the parishes and they control the
raising of funds (through rates) and the dispersal of funds to the workhouse in their area. Our parishes are Bremhill, Calne and Calne Without (which included Blackland, Bowood and Calstone Wellington), Cherhill, Compton Bassett, Heddington, Hilmarton (including Highway) and Yatesbury.”

Mrs. Duncan had brought with her another dozen or so books to add to our library, and I took her to see it, and she seemed well pleased with our efforts.